Monthly Archives: August 2021

A visitor to a mock safe injection site set up by SIF MA NOW at Harvard School of Public Health checks out the items on the demonstration table. (Jessica Rinaldi / The Boston Globe / Getty Images)

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Lets give out heroin, for free, to anyone who wants it. This is not a provocation meant to make you gasp or to elicit angry clicksrather, its a proven strategy for reducing the harm of opioids thats already in use in several countries across the globe. We face two drug-related crises in the United States. The first we can all agree on: Drugs are killing people at unprecedented rates. Over 90,000 people die each year from overdoses in the US, an amount that has quintupled since 1999. The second crisis is disputed, but no less deadly: Our drug policy leaves people to fend for themselves, while we waste time and resources.

The carceral solutions dont work, and yet we continue to spend billions of dollars a year on the War on Drugs, attempting to arrest our way out of a public health crisis. But even as some politicians try to shift funding away from policing and prisons, the non-carceral solutions that take their placesending people to rehab and detoxare neither scientific nor effective. In fact, these abstinence-based programs dont just fail to stop the worst outcomes; they greatly increase the risk that opioid users will die. Statistically, its safer to keep using opioids than to go to rehab.

If we want to save hundreds of thousands of lives, we cannot assume that forcing people to stop consuming drugs is the only way forward for everyone. The idea that abstinence works is more about our fear of drugs than it is about science: Rehab programs have an abysmal success rate.

Instead, we must look at the facts. People use opioids like heroin because they are in pain, whether emotional or physical, and until that source of pain is addressed, drug use will continue. Its easy to blame Purdue Pharma for the current crisis, and needless to say, it played a part. But Purdue did not shut down factories in the Rust Belt, render millions of American workers jobless, cause our wages to stagnate for 50 years, or start wars that left tens of thousands of returning veterans injured, traumatized, and alone.The Argument

Until we remedy the trauma of living in our current moment, we must acknowledge that people will seek out drugs to quell their pain. And once we acknowledge this, we must follow the best available science to ensure that drug use is as safe as possible.

For people who want to get off heroin and other opioids, opioid-assisted therapies have proved to be the most effective solution. Giving drug users buprenorphine, a partial opioid agonist (meaning it satiates the opioid receptors in your brain but doesnt get you really high), reduces the risk of overdosing by 80 percent. Thats a miraculous result, and yet finding a buprenorphine program is extremely difficult in much of the US.

Decriminalization is also a crucial step forward: It destigmatizes drugs and keeps users out of a cycle of abuse and imprisonment. But decriminalization doesnt address the main cause of opioid deaths: Illegal drugs are unregulated and thus untested, and as a result their strength varies tremendously. Worse, theyre often contaminated with much more dangerous opioids like fentanyl, which now accounts for most opioid overdoses.

Programs in which nonprofits, researchers, or governments simply give people drugs have been piloted in at least six countries, and theyve been successful. A study of a 15-year heroin-assisted treatment program in Swiss prisons, for example, found no deleterious effects; its participants lived and worked just like the rest of the prison population. Current Issue

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In Vancouver, Canada, activists are so convinced that handing out reliable drugs is the only solution to the overdose crisis that theyre doing it themselves, illegally. Eris Nyx, a member of the Drug User Liberation Front, told me that shed seen other interventions fail. So she and other members of the DULF began to buy heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine in bulk, worked with labs to test the supply, and then distributed it for free to people already using the drugs.

The whole crux of this issue is the regime of prohibition, Nyx said. The death is from the volatility in the drug supply, so the fix is to give people drugs with a predictable content.

But the DULFs operation is not ideal. The government is against it, criminal organizations dont like that its giving away drugs, and the group is smallit cant really make a dent in the overdose crisis.

The only solution, Nyx said, is to safely supply drugs and allow them to be distributed in stores. That might seem like a pie-in-the-sky proposal, but we already do it for a drug that kills almost 100,000 Americans a year: alcohol. Were just a few people, and this is a global, UN-level issue, Nyx told me. Im just some person that has watched other people die and wants that to stop.

Continued here:

We Should Hand Out Free Heroin to Drug Users - The Nation

In returning to power in Kabul over the weekend, the Taliban demonstrated both the success of a lightning military offensive against Afghanistans then government, as well as their remarkable resilience in the face of onslaughts by the worlds most powerful military for 20 years.

When they were driven out of Kabul in November 2001, the Taliban had been in power for a little over five years, and in existence for only seven. What makes them the fighting force that outlasted the United States in its longest ever war, and defeated the Afghans who received equipment and training worth over $80 billion from the Americans? Where have the Taliban found the funds to sustain themselves over a two-decade war with an adversary with almost limitless resources?

Flourishing drug trade

In a May 2020 report, the United Nations Security Council estimated that overall Taliban annual combined revenues range from $300 million to upwards of $1.5 billion per annum. It said that while the figures for 2019 were lower, officials were careful to note that the Taliban used resources effectively and efficiently and were not experiencing a cash crisis.

The primary source of the Talibans funds has been the drug trade, as report after report has shown over two decades. Their income suffered in recent years because of the reduction in poppy cultivation and revenue, less taxable income from aid and development projects, and increased spending on governance projects, the UNSC report said.

However, while heroin cultivation and production have provided the bulk of Taliban revenue for many years, the emergence of methamphetamine in Afghanistan is giving impetus to a major new drug industry with significant profit margins, the report noted.

According to the report, interdiction of methamphetamine was first recorded by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in 2014 (9 kg) and has continued on a sharp upward trajectory, with 650 kg interdicted in the first half of 2019. Methamphetamine, the report said, was stated to be more profitable than heroin because its ingredients are low-cost and it does not require large laboratories.

The Taliban, it said, were reported to be in control of 60 per cent of methamphetamine laboratories in the key producing provinces of Farah and Nimruz.

The report quoted officials as saying the system of heroin smuggling and taxation organised by the Talibanstretched across eight of Nangarhars southern districts from Hisarak to Dur Baba, on the border with Pakistan.

In each district, smugglers paid a tax to district Taliban commanders of 200 Pakistan rupees (approximately $1.30), or its equivalent in afghanis, per kilogram of heroin. Smugglers were provided documentation by each Taliban commander certifying payment of tax before proceeding to the next district and repeating the same process. Afghan officials stated that the smuggling routes thus helped to financially empower each district Taliban commander.

In a report published last year, UNODC said Afghanistan, the country where most opium is produced, which has accounted for approximately 84 per cent of global opium production over the past five years, supplies markets in neighbouring countries, Europe, the Near and Middle East, South Asia and Africa and to a small degree North America (notably Canada) and Oceania.

Mining, taxes, donations

In September 2020, Radio Free Europe reported on a confidential report commissioned by NATO, which concluded that the Taliban has achieved, or is close to achieving, financial and military independence, which enables [it] to self-fund its insurgency without the need for support from governments or citizens of other countries.

Besides the illicit drug trade overseen by Mullah Muhammad Yaqoob, the son of Taliban founder Mullah Muhammad Omar, a shadowy figure who is expected to play an important role in the new government the Taliban had expanded its financial power in recent years through increased profits from illegal mining and exports, the report said.

It estimated that the militant movement earned a staggering US $1.6 billion in the year ending March 2020. Of this, $ 416 million came from the drug trade; over $ 450 million from the illegal mining of iron ore, marble, copper, gold, zinc, and rare earth metals; and $ 160 million from extortion and taxes in the areas and on the highways it controlled. It also got $ 240 million in donations, largely from Persian Gulf nations. To launder the money it earned, it imported and exported consumer goods worth $ 240 million. The Taliban also own properties worth $ 80 million in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the report said.

Weapons from Pak and loot

The Taliban do not appear to have had any dearth of weapons to fight the Afghan and US forces. Support from Pakistan has always been key, but the Taliban did not rely on any single source of arms and ammunition.

Journalists such as Gretchen Peters, Steve Coll, and others have repeatedly pointed to the support of the ISI and Pakistan army to the Taliban, directly and through the Haqqani network, a sprawling Islamist mafia based in Pakistans tribal areas and in Afghanistan, comprising fighters, extremist religious schools, and shady businesses with powerful connections to Arab countries in the Gulf and in Pakistan. American leaders and generals have openly accused Pakistan of diverting to the Taliban funds that it received to fight against the fundamentalist movement.

There are other players too. In September 2017, then Afghan Army Chief General Sharif Yaftali told the BBC that he had documents to prove that Iran was supplying weapons and military equipment to the Taliban in western Afghanistan.

A November 2019 report by the US Defense Intelligence Agency noted that since at least 2007, Iran has provided calibrated support including weapons, training, and funding to the Taliban to counter US and Western influence in Afghanistan, combat ISIS-Khorasan, and increase Tehrans influence in any post-reconciliation government.

The US has also accused Russia of supporting the Taliban, but there is little evidence of that.

Beyond these external avenues, the Taliban has also been able to arm itself with the weapons and ammunition that the US has provided to the Afghan forces over the years.

Americas Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), a Congress-backed watchdog, noted in an analysis in 2013 that nearly 43 per cent of the firearms 2,03,888 of the 4,74,823 provided to the Afghan forces were unaccounted for. Given the Afghan governments limited ability to account for or properly dispose of these weapons, there is a real potential for these weapons to fall into the hands of insurgents, which will pose additional risks to US personnel, the ANSF, and Afghan civilians, the analysis said.

US military assets with Taliban

No figures are available for what kind of American military assets, and in what numbers, have fallen into Taliban hands.

The US Government Accountability Office said in a report in 2017 that between 2003 and 2016 the US funded 75,898 vehicles, 5,99,690 weapons, 208 aircraft, and 16,191 pieces of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance equipment for the Afghan forces.

In the last few years, 7,000 machine guns, 4,700 Humvees, and over 20,000 grenades have been given to the Afghan forces, SIGAR data show.

SIGARs July quarterly report mentioned that the Afghan Air Force had a total of 167 aircraft, including jets and helicopters that were usable/in-country as of June 30. This included 23 A-19 aircraft, 10 AC-208 aircraft, 23 C-208 aircraft, and three C-130 aircraft, besides 32 Mi-17, 43 MD-530, and 33 UH-60 helicopters.

On August 17, two days after the Taliban took control of Kabul, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said, We dont have a complete picture, obviously, of where every article of defence materials has gone but certainly, a fair amount of it has fallen into the hands of the Taliban.

Stijn Mitzer and Joost Oliemans, conflict analysts specialising in modern-day weaponry and military tactics who have worked for websites such as Janes, Bellingcat and NK News, have used open-source intelligence to track the equipment that is proven to have fallen into Talibans hands.

According to them, the Taliban now possess two warjets, 24 helicopters, and seven Boeing Insitu ScanEagle Unmanned Vehicles that were with the Afghan forces earlier. Additionally, according to them, between June and August 14 the Taliban captured 12 tanks, 51 armoured fighting vehicles, 61 artillery and mortar, eight anti-aircraft guns, and 1,980 trucks, jeeps, and vehicles, including over 700 Humvees.

All of this in addition to the fact that the forces of the erstwhile Afghan government have surrendered everywhere in the country and the old Northern Alliance opposition is a shadow of its former self makes the Taliban more powerful than it ever was. It is now much more militarily powerful, Jonathan Schroden, a military operations analyst who directs the Countering Threats and Challenges Program at the CNA Corporation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research and analysis organization based in Arlington, Virginia, told The Indian Express. It effectively converts them from a lightly armed guerrilla movement to a pseudo-conventional army.

According to Dr Schroden, among the military equipment that the Taliban now has, the D-30 howitzers are probably the most lethal. It is concerning both as a waste of US taxpayer money and as a potential source of weapons for the myriad terrorist groups that have ties to the Taliban, he said.

And there is a non-zero possibility of groups like al-Qaeda or the Pakistani Taliban getting their hands on some of the weapons.

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Explained: How drugs funded the Talibans 20-year war with the US - The Indian Express

Delphine Schrank, The Rebel of Rangoon, (Nation Books, 2016)

Since it staged a coup detat in February, Myanmars military has waged war against the countrys democracy and its own people. It has killed nearly 1,000 civilians and has bombed civilian populations in border areas. It has arrested nearly 8,000 people, including children and family members of dissidents it cannot find. And it has already put Aung San Suu Kyi and the other aging leaders of the National League for Democracy, which routed the armys party for a second straight election in November 2020, on trial. A poet who wrote that the revolution dwells in the heart was arrested and tortured to death. His body returned to his family without his heart.

Some in Myanmar are fighting back. Various armed ethnic insurgencies have stepped up their attacks on government forces. Though it has over 350,000 men under arms, the military, known as the Tatmadaw, is spread thin across multiple fronts. A nationwide civil disobedience movement has confronted the military, bringing the economy, health, and education systems to the brink of collapse. The World Bank is expecting at least an 18 percent contraction of Myanmars gross domestic product in 2021.

Myanmar is on the verge of becoming a failed state. The Tatmadaw is digging in for the long haul, extracting enough rents from oil, gas, gems, timber, and hydroelectricity sales to China and Thailand to enrich itself. And it gets its cut of the surging trade in illicit narcotics from the Golden Triangle region, now among the largest centers of synthetic drug production in the world.

And all of this matters for the United States. While its economy is small, Myanmar is strategically located between India and China. Political unrest is making it a safe haven for drug trafficking, money laundering, and transnational crime. With an underfunded health system on the verge of collapse, Myanmar is now a COVID-19 hotspot. Developments in Myanmar are of immense interest to the geopolitics of Southeast Asia and to policymakers in Beijing and New Delhi.

The Military in Myanmars History

Myanmars military began to dominate the countrys politics soon after it gained independence from Britain in 1948. Gen. Ne Win staged a coup detat in 1962 and implemented the Burmese Way to Socialism. The government nationalized foreign assets; revalued the currency in 45- and 90-kyat notes because Win thought nine was a lucky number, which wiped out savings; and closed off the country to trade and investment. The country was hermetically sealed, leaving the egregious human rights situation largely unreported. In the late 1980s, Wins own generals sidelined him and allowed a brief liberalization. This culminated in the 1990 election that the newly established National League for Democracy won and that the Tatmadaw annulled.

The military junta, officially the State Law and Order Restoration Council, known by its Orwellian acronym SLORC, ran the country into the ground in its own way. Christina Finks brilliant work, Living Silence: Burma Under Military Rule, covered just how totalitarian a society Myanmar under the Tatmadaw was.

But under the State Law and Order Restoration Council, there were two distinct changes: The country jettisoned autarky, and the military grew larger. First, in place of the Burmese Way to Socialism, the government embraced crony capitalism. Under this model, the military dominated the countrys natural resources, emerging as the largest economic player as a result.

Second, the council increased the size of the military from 200,000 to over 350,000 personnel. And despite intermittent ceasefires, the State Law and Order Restoration Council was almost always at war with several of the dozens of armed organizations along the countrys periphery. The Tatmadaw waged campaigns, known as the four cuts, a brutal counter-insurgency doctrine that included the targeting of civilians, torture, gang rapes, conscription of civilians as porters, and looting. This was no population-centric strategy; it was a scorched-earth effort to terrorize the population into submission.

At war constantly since 1948, the Tatmadaw cannot claim to have ever defeated an enemy. At best it negotiated ceasefires while setting its sights on the next ethnic group. This perpetual insecurity was exactly what the armed forces wanted. It allowed them to uphold their argument that the country was constantly at threat of breaking apart and that only they could hold it together. This pervasive anxiety allowed them to plunder the natural resources in the restive border regions.

While most international media coverage of Myanmar has always focused on Suu Kyi, the daughter of the countrys founder, she was in some ways an accidental democracy leader. She founded the National League for Democracy while home from the United Kingdom to take care of her ailing mother. Western leaders and journalists all too often personalize these relationships, awed by the tenacity and grace of the woman who was still able to lead her party to elections in 1990 despite being under house arrest. In all she was under house arrest for 17 years, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. To be sure, she has a steely determination and a conviction that she is fulfilling her fathers legacy.

Tepid Efforts to Liberalize

The military eventually made efforts to liberalize the country but always made sure its power was secure. In 2008, it issued a new constitution, which created a pathway to restore civilian governance. But the militarys domination of politics was clear: The constitution had dozens of articles that enshrined its political powers. It awarded the military 25 percent of the seats in parliament and required more than 75 percent of the vote to make any constitutional amendments.

And yet there were some reforms. Elections were held in 2010, although the National League for Democracy boycotted them because of a highly controversial election law that constrained opposition candidates. Reforms still progressed, and in 2015, the National League for Democracy was swept to power in what were deemed free and fair elections. The military ceded some influence, confident that its interests would be protected through block representation in parliament, control of key ministries, immunity from civilian purview of budgets or promotions, a business empire, and ongoing wars.

Once in government, the National League for Democracy proved equally inattentive to human rights concerns as the military. It acquiesced in the militarys genocide of the Rohingya, attacked the free press, and refused to implement the recommendations of independent U.N. and international commissions to provide legal protections and stop the assaults on the unarmed Rohingya community. Suu Kyi defended the Tatmadaw against charges of genocide in a suit brought by Gambia in the Hague.

Despite Suu Kyis help, the military still considered her a threat. In 2019 and 2020, she called for votes to amend the constitution to strip the military of its political power despite the near impossibility of getting it passed. In the November 2020 elections, in an even greater rout than in 2015, the National League for Democracy and allies inched dangerously close to securing 75 percent of seats, which would allow it to amend the constitution. The military declared, without evidence, the results to be fraudulent, and when the league didnt back down, it staged a coup on Feb. 1, 2021.

It is in this context that it is worth reading Delphine Schranks The Rebel of Rangoon. The former Washington Post correspondent based her work, originally published in 2016, on clandestine interviews conducted from 2009 to 2012. The country was still quite closed and xenophobic, and Schrank could operate only on a tourist visa with no protections. She interviewed journalists and activists such as U Win Tin, a political prisoner for 19 years who spanned two distinct generations: The 88 generation, which fled to the jungles or lived in exile after the military annulled the election in 1990, and the 2007 Saffron Revolution generation, which emerged from the State Law and Order Restoration Councils economic incompetence.

By 2007, Myanmar was one of the least developed countries in the world. Botched currency and other reforms led to the collapse of the kyat. Though disastrous for ordinary people, the crisis was no worry for the military, whose rents and ill-gotten gains were all in foreign exchange. Inflation soared, and the price of staples went up, in some cases by 400 percent. People first took to the streets, but the Buddhist monks then took the lead. The saffron-robed monks had every reason to think that security forces would attack civilians, but were confident that the generals would not risk their own karma by ordering troops to open fire on the clergy, their path to attaining merit. Some 30 were gunned down, others were defrocked and arrested, and temples were occupied.

But during the entire Saffron Revolution, the National League for Democracy which at that point was beleaguered and harassed but still a legal entity was absent. This was a popular uprising against a totalitarian regime that the venerable opposition leaders never saw coming and never controlled. Indeed, Suu Kyi, aware of the militarys propensity for force, counseled against popular uprisings.

Schranks book goes into rich detail about how the National League for Democracy is organized, covers debates over timing and tactics, and reveals its inner workings. It covers the critical period after the Saffron Revolution through the decision to boycott the 2010 election and the decision to contest by-elections in 2012. Her work chronicles the incredibly hard work and danger of knitting together disparate groups, generations and factions such as student groups to trade unions into a nationwide party that ultimately defeated the military and gave the country so much hope in 2015 and in 2020.

It reminds the reader that the media pay far too much attention to leaders like Suu Kyi when the real work of politics is done by a coalition of activists working in great danger behind the scenes. Though Suu Kyi is omnipresent in the book, she is referred to as Auntie, a background figure whom the coalition of activists could unify behind.

While the generals factored in a small backlash and anticipated diplomatic opprobrium to their latest coup, they truly underestimated the resilience, courage, and determination of the population that has sustained nearly seven months of opposition to the military. The people benefitted from a decades worth of consistent economic growth, global integration, a freer press, and the proliferation of the internet and social media. They are not giving up 10 years of hard-won economic, civil, legal, and political progress without a fight.

What Happens Next

Rebel of Rangoon says a lot about what we should expect moving forward as the military seeks to entrench itself. Suu Kyi (76) is under arrest and could likely be in custody for the rest of her life. The average age of the majority of the nearly 30 detained senior political leaders is well over 70. The Tatmadaw thinks it can wait out the National League for Democracys leadership to quite literally die out. And it has reason to think that the strategy could work: The league was always a vehicle for Suu Kyi, not a broad-based party. Indeed, it has done a notoriously bad job at cultivating the next generation of leaders. Schrank is very frank about its failing in this regard. And with COVID-19 raging throughout the country and prison system while the military hoards supplies, the Tatmadaw seems to see the pandemic as an opportunity: Several National League for Democracy leaders have died from the virus while incarcerated.

As with the 2007 Saffron Revolution that Schrank chronicles, the current civil disobedience movement is largely leaderless at the national level. A new generation of leaders is being cultivated at the local level. The league is largely decapitated and/or absent. Indeed, Suu Kyis defense of the military for genocide so badly tarnished her that the international community is barely taking note of her arrest and show trial.

The new heroes, if they emerge, will be names that the outside world has never heard of. And given the pervasiveness and resources of the security forces, that is exactly what needs to happen. The National League for Democracys leadership is arrested and simply too stubborn to seek a negotiated offramp. The protests of 2021 have only diminished because of a raging pandemic that has brought the healthcare system to the brink of collapse. And the protestors did so against horrible odds against a regime that has made no secret its willingness to torture detainees to death, engage in collective punishment, raze villages, and gun down unarmed citizens.

More, the collapse of the economy, including the near shutdown of the financial system, the collapse of imports and exports, the mass strikes and walk-offs, and already 20 percent decline of the values of the kyat will continue to fuel the ongoing unrest. With an 18 percent contraction of gross domestic product so far in 2021, the countrys 55 million people are hurtling into poverty.

Many of the leaders of the 88 Generation, the Saffron Revolution, and the founders of the league were activist-journalists. And much of Schranks work focuses on their information campaign, the use of exile media organizations such as the Voice of Democratic Burma, the Irrawaddy, and Radio Free Asia. Schrank chronicles the Tatmadaws military intelligence and Special Branch assaults on the press and the contested space of a new import to the country: cell phones.

Though Myanmars cyber capabilities are significant, there is already evidence that the sheer volume of data that the military intercepts on a daily basis is overwhelming. Encrypted platforms have made the civil disobedience movement possible.

What Schranks book does not address is the complex dynamics of Myanmars various ethnic armed organizations, apart from the degree to which they trained the urban youth of the 88 and Saffron generations. Here, Rebel of Rangoon is less of a guide for a complex landscape today. In the period Schrank covers, the democracy activists are non-violent. That is no longer the case.

An opposition National Unity Government has been established and is operating clandestinely on the ground as the junta fails to provide basic human services. It includes ousted government ministers, but it is more broad-based than the former government. The National Unity Government established the peoples defense forces. With few arms and resources, it has to rely on an alliance of armed ethnic groups, particularly the Karen National Army and the Kachin Independence Army. Schrank rightly notes that the State Law and Order Restoration Council-era military largely kept the armed groups apart from the non-violent democracy activists. Today, the National Unity Government is trying to coordinate the activities of both, with mixed results. They are clearly no match for the Tatmadaw in terms of manpower, training, and resources.

The National Unity government faces headwinds. The Tatmadaw has a 70-year history of divide and conquer, peeling off one opponent after another with promises of autonomy and control over natural resources. As a result, there has never been a strong alliance or any semblance of coordinated operations among the ethnic militias.

Several groups, including two of the best armed and equipped, the Kachin Independence Army and the Karen National Liberation Army, have pledged allegiance to the National Unity Government and stepped up attacks against the Tatmadaw. Other groups, such as the United Wa State Army, see utility in working with a diplomatically isolated and financially desperate military regime. The Wa control the majority of Myanmars illegal methamphetamines and heroin operations, both of which are becoming rapidly more productive, according to the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime.

Still other organizations, such as the Arakan Army, are in flux. They neither condemned the coup nor ended their December 2020 ceasefire. But they have launched a few attacks to send a message that another front would not be in the Tatmadaws interests.

But what is new is that the fight is starting to be taken to the cities itself, with or without the approval of the National Unity Government. There has been a string of urban bombings targeting Tatmadaw forces and facilities near its party headquarters. A dozen pro-junta officials have been assassinated. And yet, the degree to which the National Unity Government has any command and control over this remains unknown. Either way, this campaign of urban violence is clearly one that the Tatmadaw did not anticipate.

Another unknown is the degree of unity among the Tatmadaw leadership. Was the decision to stage the coup broad-based among the senior officer corps? Or was it the decision of just the senior generals, the last gasp of the generation who came of age under military rule, and seek the spoils of that system?

The Tatmadaws officer corps has never split before. Its members live in cantonments, have their own school and university system, their own corporations that employ family members and provide sinecure for retired officers, and their own banks and media. The military works to keep its troops physically separated from the civilian population across all spheres of life.

But is this time different? The economic contraction will hurt the mid-tier officers very hard. Even some of the senior officers are not immune from the collapse of the economy, diminished job prospects for their children, and limited opportunities (if international sanctions start to bite) to travel abroad. Their children are as addicted to their smart phones as everyone else and are likely angered by the regular internet shutdowns.

In short, is the militarys wealth being shared widely enough to maintain unity in the armed forces? If its being concentrated in the hands of a few senior leaders, internal struggles could emerge. The Tatmadaw does have a history of putting some greedy and economically incompetent leaders out to pasture. If thats the case, who is todays Thein Sein searching for an off ramp?

After the coup in February, the Tatmadaw pledged to restore democracy in a years time. It then postponed that to August 2023. The armed forces appear to be adopting the Thai military playbook to cling to power, including the legal dissolution of the National League for Democracy; the arrest, harassment, exile or cooptation of members; the banning of politicians who have criminal records; the use of opaque national security laws; a shift to proportional representation; military appointed commissions; and capture of the judiciary.

Any military-backed government will not placate the population. There are years of underground organizing, party and coalition building ahead, all under very repressive conditions. That will require there to be armies of Rebels of Rangoon.

Zachary Abuza is a professor at the National War College and an adjunct professor in Georgetown Universitys Security Studies Program. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the opinions of the National War College or Department of Defense.

Image: Xinhua (Photo by Haymhan Aung)

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Authoritarianism and Resistance in Myanmar - War on the Rocks

I was against the wars of choice in Afghanistan and Iraq from the outset. I said then that we no longer have theaters of war, we have suburban, mall-size, multiplexes of wars, none of which we should be in. And we never know when we are done because we have no clear objective.

Yet again, our politicians, military-industrial complex and Pentagon intelligentsia have come to find out that Afghanistan is not Kansas.

This week, and in much the same manner as Vietnam, the chaotic images of the United States military leaving another unnecessary war that we did not win should cause future generations to reflect on our role and our capacity. Afghanistan has been called the Graveyard of Empires. It essentially defeated the invasions of Great Britain, Russia and now the United States. I think the Taliban should get invited into the Southeastern Conference, just based on strength of schedule.

Considering the disorderly way the crime-ridden city of Atlanta is currently being run, maybe the Taliban could step in and bring some stability and order to that once great city.

Biden looked feckless in withdrawal and predictably blamed Bush and Trump. Then he put Afghanistan on the honor system so he could move on to fight fake domestic wars like the ones on white supremacists, global warming, and others like the war on women, war on black men, war on the middle class, war on poverty, war on drugs, etc. Its easier to say you won fake wars. The only casualty in these fake wars is the truth.

I do not blame the honorable soldiers who fought. I blame a big, unaccountable, incompetent government morass for embroiling us in so many wars based on lies. From the false Gulf of Tonkin attack that got us into the quagmire in Vietnam to the Bay of Pigs; from the Shah of Iran to Iraq (lies about yellow cake and weapons of mass destruction); from Afghanistan (to get bin Laden) to Egypt, Libya and others, the USA just costs itself trillions and never makes the situation better or America safer.

And if you think that fifteen years and trillions of dollars spent in Iraq and Afghanistan got bin Laden, you are wrong. We found him in his house in Pakistan.

What the USA really needs is someone who can keep order: a strong leader who can keep militant Muslims in line and the oil flowing, stabilize a country, make Shiites and Sunnis get along, keep the Iranians at bay and crack the whip when needed. We did have such a man, Saddam Hussein, but we hanged him a few years back.

Against all reason, America continues to meddle in other countries. In Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, the basic error we made was believing that tribal governments and local military would fight beside us for our beliefs. These countries have people with values different from ours, and they are not going to fight like we did at Valley Forge or Normandy for ideals. They are goons, thieves and religious zealots who steal our guns and equipment and run away at the first sight of the enemy.

This inept Biden administration handled the withdrawal as you might have expected: terribly. Just a couple of weeks ago Biden said the Afghan government would not fall. His administrations idea of protecting the people in Kabul and other Afghan cities from the marauding rapist Taliban invaders is to make sure they are vaccinated and wearing masks.

Both Republicans and Democrats complained that Biden went on vacation in Delaware during this Taliban takeover. The GOP could not believe Biden would hide during this crisis, and elite liberals were appalled that Biden would vacation in Delaware.

It will give the Biden administration solace that, when the Taliban rolled into Kabul and the U.S. military fled, they found the Critical Race Theory and diversity training documents that our leadership left behind. Those materials will go a long way to inform the Taliban, and the world, just why we lost.

If there is a positive in all these wars of choice for us, it is that we run and abandon billions of dollars of military equipment in these countries, making them reliable customers for replacement parts.

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HART: The next foreign policy decision Washington gets right will be the first - Odessa American

In the transition summer between grade school and middle school, I had this discussion with both of my sons.

A friend, someone youve played with and hung out with will try drugs and may even offer you drugs, I said.

I did so theyd understand that drug users were not foreign invaders, or evildoers lurking in the shadows. Theyd be people they played baseball, basketball or soccer with, or maybe attended a birthday party. They might even be their buddies.

I recalled the shock I felt in junior high when Jack, a kid I knew from youth football, was assigned the locker next to mine. Jack and I always got along at football. We spent a lot of time on the sidelines together, sharing similar anti-authority views. The school was massively overcrowded so I was happy to see a familiar, friendly face.

But the first few times I said hello, hed grunt and turn away. Kids changed in junior high, slipping into different skins, angling to be part of the cool crowd. Knowing I was doomed to never accomplish that (my hair refused to feather and my wardrobe consisted entirely of pastel-colored Toughskins), I let it go.

Then one day, Jack said, Hey, just thought Id let you know Im selling drugs out of my locker.

He stepped aside and let me see the shelves absent any sign of school materials but displaying an assortment of drugs and drug paraphernalia.

Ill be selling after the last class, he said. You may not want to be around you know in case something goes wrong.

Walking to the bus that day, I remember feeling relief that Jack still thought of me as a friend and sadness that wed never stand together on the sidelines commenting on the idiocy of football coaches ever again. It felt like one of those moments when childhood ends.

I dont know why Jack got involved in drugs, or why any of a number of close friends turned to drugs as junior high led into high school. People who know that are much smarter than I, but I did know that how society treated drugs and drugs users at the time was horrifically wrong.

The War on Drugs. It was declared but as far as I know never ended by an official cease-fire.

Who were we declaring war on? It had to be someone faceless and far off. It couldnt be the people I knew consuming the drugs. They were my friends sweet-natured and goofy and prone to making some really bad choices.

Of course, the War on Drugs implied there would be casualties. Those people I did know, like my former brother-in-law who ODd on heroin while in the parking lot of a methadone clinic.

Were these acceptable loses some unknown number of lives sacrificed to achieve the greater goal of victory declared and the forces of evil rebuffed?

It would be nice if we had learned from the missteps of the 1970s-80s, but here we are in the summer of 2021 watching young people in our community die from drug overdoses.

Obviously, the drugs are deadly literally poison. Why would someone consume that? I did not know in 1976 and I do not know today.

I just know the loss, everybody feels the loss. Where does this empty feeling lead us?

To understanding, maybe? Drugs (of the illicit, street variety) are bad. Drug users arent bad. But theyre criminals, right? Its illegal to possess and consume drugs weve deemed illegal a shifting distinction over the years.

Illegal is hidden until the outcomes cannot be ignored. The drugs consumed are of unknown origin and ingredients. It makes all our mistakes not just costly, but potentially fatal.

The path forward has to be different than the path weve followed, otherwise, we will continue to wonder why with each life lost.

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Nation of Mike: Searching for a path forward - Daily Record-News

Drug lords switching out gold chains for bespoke suits, politicians proposing to legalize cocaine and judges acquitting cocaine traffickers on compassionate grounds. The criminal underworld in Latin America, the worlds most violent and unequal region, is changing faster than you can say Narcos.

Forget everything you thought you knew about its drug barons. Those glitzy TV shows are out of date the reality is a lot murkier. This weeks Sunday Magazine takes you on a journey through Latin Americas modern-day drug underworld, highlights some of the boldest ideas for tackling trafficking and violence and adds a dose of crime-ridden soccer.

Unhealthy Living

Hard drugs, including heroin and cocaine, are as popular as ever across the globe and especially in North America and Asia. With the worlds largest cocaine producers, and some of the most powerful crime organizations operating from Latin America, this corner of the world finds itself trapped in a new cycle of lawlessness, government corruption, crumbling judiciaries and widespread poverty. The result: a region thats home to some of the most violent cities on the planet.

Fewer Gold Chains, More Suits

Who is behind all this? Today, your typical Latin American underworld boss looks a lot less like the suave, showboating Pablo Escobar as depicted on Narcos and much more like a suited office worker. Why? Because a criminal flying under the radar is a criminal less likely to get caught. The new drug lords are different. They have gone to universities, they have [legally qualified] accountants, they know about the law, how to present information to avoid justice, Angela Olaya Castro, co-founder and researcher at the Conflict Responses Foundation, tells OZY. Crime organizations from Colombia, Brazil, El Salvador and Mexico are smart, well organized and very specialized.

Its the Economy, Stupid

Traffickers know drugs, and also business. Thats why they are increasingly pursuing new consumers with deeper pockets in Europe and Australia. Thats not all. In Colombia, they are experimenting with new technologies that allow them to produce much more cocaine on smaller tracts of land. And when they are not making enough money from drugs, criminals in Mexico, Brazil and across Central America are diversifying and trading in anything from arms and gold to endangered animals and people, even during the pandemic. In the end, its all about making a quick buck.

The Billion-Dollar Answer

If you have been paying attention to the news, youll know drug decriminalization is a big thing across the Americas (look at the U.S., Uruguay, Mexico and Peru). In Colombia, senator Ivn Marulanda is taking things a step further. In December, he proposed a bill to legalize cocaine, like in Bolivia. How would it work? The government would buy all coca leaves and give them to Indigenous communities to produce food, medicine and fertilizers. At a cost of around $680 million, Marulanda says this plan would cost half the money authorities currently spend trying to destroy crops, without much success.

The Exit Door

But dont get too excited just yet. Decriminalization alone, experts say, is not a sure-fire antidote to Latin Americas organized crime problem. Hctor Silva Avalos, a researcher from El Salvador, explains that government corruption is what facilitates criminal activity. Without real political will, tackling it has been nearly impossible. Another problem? This is a very unequal fight, says Olaya Castro. While organized crime can pay the greatest experts and quickly adapt to any situation, governments [in Latin America] dont have enough resources to investigate and fight them. That is unlikely to change in the near future.

Tailor-Made Menu

Theres marijuana, cocaine, heroin . . . and an endless list of new, illicit chemical highs. Medical advances unfolding in research laboratories, such as brain implants to manipulate moods and apps that provide digital highs (minus the risk of overdose), could potentially replace the current slate of illegal drugs. Does that mean the balance of power could shift from Colombia and Mexico to Silicon Valley? Dont write off the criminals just yet. If demand for one drug decreases, criminals will look for the next thing because there will always be a next [illegal] thing people want, Olaya Castro explains.

Crypto High(Way)

Wanna know what else is going to change? The way drugs are bought and sold. Shrouded in secrecy, dark web markets already popular in Western countries are spreading across the digital globe, providing users with new avenues to buy their next high. Whats worse, authorities appear unable to shut them down for good. Can these markets replace the old-fashioned drug cartels? Not entirely, says author and expert Mike Power. He told Vice that drug sellers are unlikely to ever operate at the same level as large crime organizations, which effectively serve as wholesalers with connections on both sides of the supply chain.

The Cure for Addiction?

Off the streets, another war on drugs is being fought inside labs, where scientists have been looking for ways to make illicit drugs less harmful. Among the potential solutions is a vaccine that could tame a persons desire to use cocaine. Another is early DNA sequencing, which could help professionals diagnose a persons potential for becoming an addict. Other scientists are trying to develop drinks that can produce the same pleasurable feelings as alcohol, minus the negative side effects. Sounds great, right? Well, such advances carry many ethical implications (just imagine what governments could do if they had access to everybodys DNA sequencing).

Crime and Punishment

Technology is already changing the way we think about justice (think online courts, police cameras, DNA databases). But in cash-strapped Latin America, where prisons have reached their breaking point and corruption is common, deploying such state-of-the-art measures to combat crime looks to be a long way off. While the regions governments have relied on mass incarceration even for nonviolent drug offenses to tackle crime, there is still hope for new strategies. In Argentina, for example, authorities recently acquitted a woman who crossed the countrys border with Chile with 6.6 pounds of cocaine taped around her waist. The judge said she had been forced to smuggle drugs to cover the cost of surgery for her ailing son. Another example is Uruguay, where an open prison that allows inmates to work and receive an education has been lauded for its positive results.

Giving Soccer a Bad Name

Well before international soccer megastars like Lionel Messi became pristine pictures of health, the wilder soccer type was very much in vogue in South America. What changed? Money is the new cocaine, Silva Avalos says. The [soccer] idol today is a professional who takes care of his body and his health. Still, behind the scenes, not all is picture-perfect. Crime has been embedded in Latin American soccer for so long that it is practically a part of the game. From shadowy fan gangs controlling the sport in Argentina to accusations of top-level corruption among regional soccer executives, this sport has earned itself something of a bad name.

The Right Stuff

But before you burn your jersey, listen up: Its not all bad. As the most popular sport in Latin America, soccer has also been deployed as an important force for good. From the marginalized communities of Colombias Medelln to the shantytowns of Brazils Rio de Janeiro, social organizations have embraced it as a means for getting kids off violent streets and away from the predatory arms of crime groups. The principle [of those projects] is good, Silva Avalos says. The problem is that sports by itself wont fix the root causes of crime and violence: the rupture in the social contract.

Stars of the Future

Still, there is hope that kids in South America can be encouraged away from crime and drugs. Consider Thiago Almada. The 20-year-old soccer midfielder who currently plays for Argentinas Vlez Sarsfield has already been dubbed the new Carlos Tevez the Argentine superstar who grew up in an environment marred by drugs and murder. (Check out the Netflix-made dramatization of Tevezs life here). Almada was born in the same marginalized Buenos Aires neighborhood as Tevez and sees football as the door to every opportunity hes enjoyed. Now valued at more than $23 million, Almada appears to have attracted numerous international clubs eager for the young stars signature.

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Suits: The New Face of Latin American Crime - OZY